


Snake Around My Heart

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Character Death Fix, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Magic, Memory Loss, Near Death Experiences, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Resurrection, Secrets, Thor (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-05 06:35:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17319824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: Hela has granted Loki a temporary restoration of life and returned him to Thor's side, but he's not there of his own choosing. Nor is he quite whole anymore... and as the fight to restore the universe Thanos destroyed gains momentum, Thor may have to face losing his brother again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story sprang entirely from a spontaneous and sudden mental image, and I joked about writing a fic for it solely in the hopes that someone would do fanart of it. Then I wrote down the mental image and shared it on my tumblr. I forgot how many wonderful enablers follow me there. :P
> 
> A word of warning: This fic is going to get dark. How dark? I don't know yet. I'll update the tags and possibly the rating as things progress. 
> 
> If you're over on Tumblr, please consider following me at [gaslightgallows.tumblr.com](http://gaslightgallows.tumblr.com/) for more fic, reblogs about writing, and lots of randomness. Thank you for reading and especially for commenting. Comments are love. ♥
> 
> Want more? I also write original fiction! You can find it at [aflinley.com](https://www.aflinley.com/).

There were always nightmares, now, riding Thor’s back awake or asleep, in council with Rogers and the Wakandan ruling body, alone in the jungle screaming. It hardly mattered; all their lives had become a nightmare. 

Rogers wandered around the palace, urgent but aimless, invisibly bleeding. Natasha watched as much as ever, but said less, and Thor wondered if she had lost interest, somehow. The entire nation of Wakanda had gone into mourning for their king and princess, as well as the countless others they had lost. The rest of the planet was in mourning as well, and in chaos, but what survived of the Avengers remained in Wakanda. 

Behind Thor’s artificial eye, the image of Loki’s shattered body was burned into his optical nerve. 

He did what he could. He worked like a horse by day on the farms and on the rebuilding sites, and tried to drink himself to sleep at night. The local liquors were nothing like those of Asgard, but they hurt going down his throat, and it was good to feel pain he imposed on himself, even if the simple ethanol could not give him the forgetting he desired. But it was usually enough, most nights, to draw a shroud over that one accursed image. 

Most nights. 

What woke him, he wasn’t sure, and by the time his brain reorganized itself, he couldn’t remember anything specific. The sensation snaked its way into his unconscious mind and filled him with such intense horror that he bolted awake trying to scream, but his voice was strangled in his throat as though by an immense—

“Hello, little brother.”

A familiar frigid pain shot through Thor’s shoulders, pinning him to the bed. His eyes flew opened, searching frantically in the dimness of his palace bedroom, hunting for the intruder even as he struggled to free himself. Then long, slim, chill fingers stroked through his cropped hair, and he went abruptly still. 

He managed a single hoarse word. “Hela.”

The darkness in his room lightened a fraction, and he beheld the tall form of his half-sister, seated on the edge of his bed. Her pale face was framed in smooth inky hair, smiling at him without any hint of affection. “The very same. So nice to see you again.”

“No, it’s impossible. You’re dead. Surtur destroyed you.”

She smirked and patted his cheek. “Oh, I do so hate to break this to you, Thor, but… you can’t actually _kill_ Death. Hadn’t that occurred to you before now?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Yes, so I’ve heard. Rumor has it you’ve made quite another mess of things. But don’t worry. I’m here to help.” She patted his cheek again and stood up, pulling the long black daggers from his shoulders in a smooth, ruthless motion. Thor let out a strangled roar of pain. “Oh, don’t be such a baby. You’re fine.”

And she was right. To Thor’s shock, there was no blood, not even any wounds. His shoulders were unmarked. 

Hela spread her arms. “You see? Now, then. I’ve brought you a gift.”

She turned to a particularly dark patch of shadows and beckoned imperiously.

With fear and hesitation, a tatterdemalion figure emerged, and crept to the side of Thor’s bed. 

His eyes smoldered like marshlights sunk deep into his skull, and his skin was drawn so tightly, it seemed as though the bones would tear through it at any moment. His black hair snarled unkempt and angry down his back, and upon his neck, a great crushing hand-print stood out livid and purple.

“L-loki?”

The ghastly figure smiled – or tried to. The odd crisscross marks that Thor had taken for cracked skin stretched and strained, and then began to bleed, and he realized to his horror that Loki’s lips had been sewn shut.

“He’s only here to do my bidding,” said Hela, stroking a not-quite-fond hand down Loki’s stick-like arm. “When he’s done, I’m taking him back. And I can’t have him telling you all the secrets of the dead.”

“But you, how are even be here? Asgard was the source of your power. We destroyed it.”

“ _He_ destroyed it,” Hela corrected, and Thor could not miss the way Loki’s eyes darted to their sister, hunted and wary. “Yes, I needed Asgard to conquer the cosmos. But to play my role as goddess of death, I have only to wait. You all find your way to me, eventually.”

A rill of cold sweat trickled down Thor’s back. He clenched his teeth and forced as much of his rage and fear into a small ball into the bottommost corner of his guts, and reached for Loki’s hand.

His fingers were trembling. Loki looked at the outstretched palm and then back at Hela with an unreadable expression, before taking Thor’s hand. 

It was all Thor could do not to flinch away. His brother’s skin was _cold_ , so searingly cold. But it _was_ Loki, he was sure of it, and drew him closer to touch his face with shaking fingertips. “You were dead,” he murmured, letting the tears come. “Dead and broken. I thought…”

“Frost Giant DNA and spite,” said Hela with a shrug. “Both are hard to kill completely. It’s not all of him, of course. I haven’t got all of him. But it’s enough to be getting on with.” 

“Where’s the rest?” Thor demanded.

The goddess of death rolled her eyes heavenward. “Well, he was _dead_ , you see. Or nearly so. There are always some bits that go missing. And just because I can restore some semblance of life doesn’t mean I’m supposed to. Or that it’s easy. Oh, don’t worry,” she continued, when Thor’s face fell back into suspicious lines, “he’s not undead or anything like that.”

“You mean he’s not a draugr.”

“No, he’s simply himself, just a little diminished, that’s all. And I’ve brought him to you.”

Thor grinned, and he felt all his teeth showing, like a wolf. “So you’ve developed some sibling feeling, then?”

Hela’s superior little smile never wavered, but the playfulness behind it disappeared. “Please. I brought him here because you’re useless without him. And you being useless doesn’t serve my needs.” She turned her hard gaze on Loki. “Do your worst. Or else I will. Understood?”

His fingers twitched against Thor’s palm, but he nodded. 

Satisfied, the goddess of death turned to leave.

“Hela, wait. The others,” Thor pleaded, “the ones Thanos— You must give them back to us, you have to—”

She heaved a deep and beleaguered sigh. “Little boy, that’s not how this works. I’m breaking too many universal laws right now as it is. And anyway, I don’t have them. Whatever that wretched excuse for a Titan did, he didn’t send them to me. That’s all I know.”

And as she vanished, Thor thought she sounded very annoyed by that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki reveals the first part of what he knows, as well as what he fears. One way or another, it's all written in blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and especially for commenting. Comments are love. ♥
> 
> Want more? I also write original fiction! You can find it at [aflinley.com](https://www.aflinley.com/).

It was like something out of a dream: a skeletal, ghostly, yet somehow very alive Loki sitting on his bed in his room in the Wakandan palace. Thor glanced at the clock; it was the middle of the night. Nearly everyone else in the royal compound was asleep, save for the guards, and they had orders to stay away from the inner corridors to allows the royal family and guests their privacy, which was all to the good, as far was Thor was concerned. 

“The first thing I need to do,” he said to Loki, who was looking at him with a mute expectancy that he had never seen before, “is find a knife to cut out those stitches.”

Loki’s hand shot out and seized him by the wrist before he had even raised his backside from the edge of the bed. He shook his head, slowly, his eyes never leaving Thor’s face. 

“Don’t be an idiot, you can’t expect me to just _leave_ you like that, can you?”

With painful, arthritic slowness, Loki nodded. It was as though his muscles had forgotten how to process rapid motion. And yet, he had grabbed Thor’s arm quickly enough, and was still holding fast in a claw-like grip. 

Loki wiped the fingertips of his free hand across his cracked, pierced lips, smearing them with his own blood, and used the still-warm fluid to write a single direct message on the inside of Thor’s bare forearm:

**HEL TO PAY.**

Thor’s stomach churned and heaved into his mouth at the sight and smell of Loki’s blood. It brought too many things rushing in on him, all at once. “I—it’s all right, brother. You’re with me. You’re safe now. She can’t hurt you anymore. We can take them out.”

Loki narrowed his eyes and snarled behind his sealed mouth. 

“All right, all right… but you’re still bleeding. Let me go find something to help.” Neither Loki’s eyes nor his clenched hand left Thor. “Just into the next room, I promise. I’ll leave the door open,” Thor promised, feeling a different kind of déjà vu, this time from when they were boys and Loki would be plagued with nightmares, “just for a few seconds! I’ll hardly be out of your sight.”

Reluctantly, Loki unclenched his hand. Thor ignored the bruises forming on his wrist and went to find ointment, water, and a straw slender enough to slip through Loki’s lips without disturbing the cruel black stitches. 

Ointment he found in the bathroom, water and a slim metal straw in his suit’s small kitchenette. The queen mother of Wakanda, though grieving for her children and her nation, had insisted that Thor have everything that a visiting monarch could possibly need or want, and had graciously given him the one thing he wanted most in his guest quarters: self-sufficiency, and privacy. 

He gathered everything and brought it all back to the bedside, feeling the weight of Loki’s eyes on him the whole time. Clearly, his brother feared he might vanish into nothing as much as Thor feared Loki would.

“Hold still,” he said, squeezing medicated ointment onto his fingers. “This might sting.”

Loki closed his eyes and let out a wordless little keen of relief as Thor smoothed the healing salve over his bruised and bleeding lips. His jaw worked constantly, and a muscle in his cheek spasmed once, the only indication that he was in pain. 

“Sorry,” Thor muttered when he was through. He wiped his hands on the loose pants he had worn to bed, and reached for the glass of water. Loki didn’t seem to notice it at first, and widened his eyes in surprise when Thor offered it to him. 

“Take it. You look dehydrated.”

Loki raised his eyebrows questioningly, and then shrugged and took the glass. Gingerly, he maneuvered the straw between his lips and took an experimental sip. 

“Not too fast,” Thor warned. “If you start puking…” He trailed off, honestly not sure what he would do if that happened. 

Loki drank the water in small, measured gulps, until it was gone. Then he set the glass on the floor and made a gesture with his hands, aping the motion of writing. 

“Oh, you… oh! Right, right. I’m sure there’s something here…” 

It took Thor a few minutes of rummaging through his quarters before he found a tablet and stylus. “Sorry, I haven’t really looked around in here much. I’ve been… preoccupied.”

The tablet was Wakanda-style, far more advanced than anything either of them had encountered on Earth before, although still centuries behind what Asgard had achieved, and it took Loki less than a minute to determine how to connect the tablet to the monitor on the wall, so that Thor could read as he was writing without crouching over Loki’s shoulder. 

**THERE ARE LIMITS TO WHAT I AM ALLOWED TO REVEAL. BUT WHAT I CAN SAY AT THIS MOMENT IS OF PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE.**

**TONY STARK AND THE DAUGHTER OF THANOS CALLED NEBULA ARE ALIVE.**

Thor stared at the monitor in shock. “They survived The Snap? You’re sure?”

**NOTHING IS UNKNOWN TO THE DEAD. REMEMBER THAT.**

“Should you have told me that?”

**TO ANYONE WITH BRAINS, IT’S HARDLY A SECRET.**

“Oh, well, it’s nice to know that being dead again still hasn’t improved your sense of humor.”

**SHUT UP, YOU OAF. THEY ARE ALIVE BUT THEY WON’T BE FOR MUCH LONGER. THEY ARE ON NEBULA’S SHIP AND THEY ARE RUNNING OUT OF OXYGEN.**

“Damn… where are they?”

Loki quickly drew a crude star map and scribbled the coordinates. 

Thor swore violently in Ás. “Even if we had a hyperdrive ship, that’s days away from Earth, and not even the Wakandans possess that kind of space ship. They might as well be dead already!”

**VALKYRIE.**

“What?”

**VALKYRIE IS ALSO ALIVE. AND STILL IN POSSESSION OF A SPACE SHIP.**

“Valkyrie…” Thor had sent her away when Thanos attacked the Sakaarian vessel they had been using as a refugee ship, along with as many women and children as could fit in the cramped escape shuttle, and she had gone, reluctant and cursing his name, but obeying him as her king. “I’d hoped… I prayed she survived. But how can she—?”

**BEING KING OF ASGARD COMES WITH CERTAIN ADVANTAGES. YOU WIELD A KING’S WEAPON, AND CAN CALL UPON A KING’S POWER.**

Thor snorted. “Asgard? Asgard is dead.”

**DON’T MAKE ME QUOTE YOU BACK TO YOUR FACE.**

“‘Asgard’s not a place,’” Thor muttered. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and didn’t bother finishing the quotation. “Right. What can I do?”

**USE STORMBREAKER. CALL UPON THE POWER OF THE ALL-FATHERS AND GET A MESSAGE TO VALKYRIE. SHE MUST RESCUE TONY STARK AND NEBULA BEFORE THEY DIE FROM LACK OF OXYGEN, AND SHE MUST BRING THEM HERE.**

“Oh, is _that_ all…”

**IT’S ALL I CAN TELL YOU FOR THE MOMENT.**

“Why? By Odin’s Beard, Loki, why?”

**HEL TO PAY.**

Thor stared at the words on the monitor in dismay. He glanced down at the identical words in identical handwriting on his arm, now dried and stiffened, and bit the inside of his cheek, hard. 

It was a lot to take in. 

While he was thinking, he keyed up a thick nutritional shake from his kitchenette’s food dispenser and gave it to Loki with another straw, and stood over him to make sure he drank it. His brother had always had a tempestuous relationship with food, and his return from the dead had done nothing to dispel that indifference. 

“Isn’t there anything else at all that Hela will allow you to tell me right now?”

Loki slurped his shake thoughtfully for a moment, and then wrote on the tablet again. 

**THE SUN WILL SHINE ON US AGAIN.**

“You said the same thing on the ship, before…” Loki’s face changed sharply, and Thor swallowed. “What does it mean?”

**THANOS HAS INFLICTED A GRIEVOUS WOUND UPON THE UNIVERSE, AND THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT TAKE KINDLY TO BEING MAULED BY ITS OWN APPENDAGES. ALL THE RULES ARE BROKEN NOW. BUT THERE WILL BE BALANCE AGAIN, ONE DAY.**

“With you at my side again, brother,” Thor smiled, gripping Loki’s shoulder bravely, “how could it be otherwise?”

Tears suddenly glistened in Loki’s eyes, and Thor succumbed to an impulse he had harbored for over a year. He put his arms around Loki’s fragile body and held him close, and Loki clung to him, as though for dear life.

After a moment, Thor pulled away, and stepped into the attached bathroom to wash Loki’s gory message off of his arm. But no matter how much he scrubbed with soap and hot water, the words would not come off. 

Thor stared down at his arm, wet and red-raw from the scalding water. The three words of Loki’s simple, ominous message stared back. 

_**Hel to pay.** _

Growling, he grabbed a towel and went back into the bedroom. “All right, Loki, what the fuck is—?

Loki lay sprawled and limp across his bed, like a child’s discarded and broken doll, his limbs all askew and his head flopped to one side. 

Terrified, Thor grabbed his wrist and then, more hesitantly, the side of his throat, checking frantically for a pulse. 

It was there, slow and strong. His brother had simply lain back and fallen asleep. 

Thor let out a gasp of relief that hurt his throat, and dropped his forehead against Loki’s cheekbone. 

The rust-colored words could stay where they were, he decided. It mattered not.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Loki sleeps, two other guilty consciences try to find a way forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and especially for commenting. Comments are love. ♥
> 
> Want more? I also write original fiction! You can find it at [aflinley.com](https://www.aflinley.com/).

With as much care as if he had been holding a newborn baby, Thor drew the bedclothes from underneath Loki’s unconscious body and gently shifted him into a more comfortable sleeping position. He looked impossibly pale and thin and _fragile_ , but his chest rose and fell reassuringly, and Thor found some comfort in that. He paid special attention to the pillows; he wanted to be absolutely certain that Loki’s neck was supported.

“Get a message to Valkyrie,” Thor muttered, adjusting Loki’s head on the pillows just so, “to rescue Stark and Nebula before they die in space… who the hell is Nebula? And how did Stark get that far into space in the first place?”

Loki did not deign to wake and enlighten him, but the answer hardly mattered. It was at least something concrete to do, and if it worked, well, then he would explain that to the others. Along with the sudden reappearance of his thrice-dead brother.

It wouldn’t be too difficult. Stranger things had happened to all of them.

He thought about undressing Loki as well. The clothes he had adopted on Sakaar and then fought in on Asgard, and died in on _The Statesman_ , were very much the worse for wear… but in the end, Thor left them. Better to let Loki sleep.

And if there was more beneath his garb to match his lips, Thor felt that he would do better by his brother to wait and learn about them by daylight.

So he left Loki asleep in his bed, with a fresh glass of water and a straw on the nightstand. He threw on some fresh clothes and an Earth-style hooded sweatshirt that Steve Rogers had given him, and picked up his axe from where it leaned in a corner.

The weight and balance of the weapon, its star-forged head and haft of twisted wood, still felt strange in his hand, after so many centuries of Mjolnir as his faithful companion, and after having carried Stormbreaker into such a disastrous battle…

Well. It was not the axe’s fault.

Thor grabbed a bottle from his kitchen and slipped into the corridor, locking the door to his quarters as he went – not to keep Loki in, but to keep any of the palace guards or servants from stumbling in on him without warning, which was the absolute last thing any of them needed.

He strode quickly through the halls and passages, not wishing to wake anyone but not especially caring if he was seen. A king’s business was his own, after all.

Besides, who was there left to stop him?

The few guards he did pass saluted automatically but paid him no mind, and his own attention was so focused on the task at hand that he never even noticed he was being shadowed, until a voice spoke up from somewhere around the level of his knees.

“Hey, Thor, what’s up?”

Thor glanced down at the small furry creature he had met in space. “Hello, Rabbit,” he said, and wondered again how so much anger and bravery could be contained in such a tiny frame. He wasn’t surprised to find Rocket awake and wondering the halls. He suspected his friend hadn’t slept a moment since Groot’s death. The rabbit felt the loss of his tree-son very much.

Rocket poked Thor’s leg. “Come on, what’s up?”

“I’m just going to make a call.”

“Just a call, eh?” Rocket shook his head and let out a low whistle. “Must be a helluva lotta money someone owes you, if you’re visiting them at this time of night’n bringing the big guns.”

Thor grinned as the spiraling corridor finally opened up onto the roof of the palace, revealing an unfamiliar but brilliant night sky full of stars. “Oh, no, it’s a long-distance call.”

“Yeah? So what’s the bottle of booze for?”

“You’ll see, my friend.”

* * *

Valkyrie prowled the dark, cramped corridors of the small scout vessel that had so abruptly become her domain. Her last orders, when _The Statesman_ was attacked, was to get as many people to safety as she could, and to not look back. And she’d done her best, but right now ‘her best’ didn’t seem like a hell of a lot. She had no clear idea where she, the ship, or the small group of survivors that were left, were actually going. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept, or had a drink of anything but stale recycled water. She wasn’t even entirely sure what day it was.

What did it matter? Her world had ended. Again.

With a determination bordering on morbid obsession, she once more made the rounds of the people who were now under her sole care, and counted them. Civilians young and old were crammed into ever corner of the little ship, making it nearly impossible to overlook anyone, but she kept hoping the number would be wrong this time, that somehow the half who had vanished without trace the night would have miraculously reappeared when her back was turned.

It never happened. They were just… gone.

She turned a corner on her way back to the utility closet she'd claimed as her sleeping quarters, and then jumped back about five feet, her daggers instantly in her hands.

There was a figure standing in front of her in the corridor, glowing so brightly that at first, Valkyrie couldn’t make out the shape, and her nerves were so shot from stress and lack of sleep that she hurled a blade at the figure without thinking.

The form shifted quickly, and the dagger shattered against its outline, forcing her to duck.

“Well, it’s nice to see you too.”

The amused voice brought her head up with a jerk. “Thor?”

All in a moment, the glow faded almost to nothing, revealing the image of the king of Asgard. His eye burned gatekeeper-yellow, he was wearing strange clothes, and there was a very bizarre-looking axe in his hand, but it was emphatically him.

“Am I drunk? Am I _dead?_ ”

“You are neither. And you’re not dreaming.”

“Are _you_ dead?”

“No. Valkyrie, I need your help. There is a small ship, not far from your coordinates, with two people on it. They’re running out of oxygen. You must get to them before it’s too late.”

She sheathed her knives. “What kind of people?”

“Friends. Well, one of them is. Tony Stark. He’s human, like Banner. Minus the giant green rage-monster part. The other is—well, I don’t know, I haven’t actually met them, but they’re called Nebula and apparently this person is with Stark, so bring them, too.”

“A non-rage monster human and a mysterious person named after an interstellar cloud of dust. Well, that’s not the weirdest couple of friends you’ve ever introduced me to...”

Thor smiled. “Oh, just wait until you actually get here.”

“Here? Thor, where the fuck is ‘here’? Where _are_ you?”

“Earth, of course. Are you able to maneuver? Can you pilot the ship?”

“I can, and so can Korg.” Thor’s smile widened at the Kronan’s name, but his delight faded at her next question. “Who’s left?”

“Me.”

“That’s... that’s it? Bruce, Heimdall, your brother—?”

“Banner is alive. We’re not sure about the Hulk. Heimdall has gone to our ancestors. And Loki...” Thor hesitated and then shook his head. “I’ll explain when you get here. And Brunnhilde? Just as a precaution, don’t mention Loki to Stark or Nebula. Especially not to Stark. They did not part on friendly terms.”

Valkyrie nodded automatically. Then she grimaced and shook her head. “Thor… Your Majesty, I… I lost them. The people. I lost half of who was left.”

“I know.”

“I’m not sure I’m good for much, if I can’t protect a handful of civilians. If I can’t even figure out what happened to them...”

“I know what happened to them. And you didn’t lose them. I did.” A haunted expression passed over Thor’s face. “Find Stark and Nebula, and then come to Earth. Quickly. We need you here. _I_ need you here.”

She took a deep breath and met his gold eye squarely. “As fast as I can, Your Majesty.”

“Good. Oh, and Brunnhilde?” He tossed something at her, something she automatically registered as having a low center of gravity, and she caught it against her chest and looked down. “Don’t drink all of it. You might need it on Stark’s ship.”

“Understood. I’ll see you on Earth.”

Thor nodded, and faded from view.

Valkyrie rubbed her temple with the back of one wrist and uncorked the bottle. “Fuck,” she coughed, her eyes watering as she took a welcome swig. “Stark’s ship can have it. This stuff’s rocket fuel.”


End file.
